The Comfort of Cats Leigh M. O'Brien   © Copyright 2024 by Leigh M. O'Brien

Photo courtesy of the author.

Jane

Jane was my first cat; she and her brother came with the circa-1830 farmhouse that my parents bought when I was four, almost five. Although an outdoor-only cat, she was sweet, gentle, friendly, and fertile (because she wasn’t spayed) and she kept producing litter after litter until the last batch, perhaps her brother’s spawn, failed miserably – or so I recall. Maybe, although I doubt it, my parents finally took her to the vet’s where she was spayed; regardless, at least one, and probably all, of the litter did not survive.

What I liked best about Jane was that, if I was outside, sitting on the porch in the sun, or sleeping in a small tent set up on the front lawn, she would find her way onto my lap or sleeping bag, and gently purr. When nothing else seemed to be going well, Jane made me feel better. I don’t remember when or how she died, but I know she lived to a ripe old age. When she died, so did my childhood innocence.

Kit-Kat

After Jane, I recall a couple of cats, including Kit-Kat, an orange tabby rescue who was named by the preschoolers with whom I was working. Kit-Kat also lived a long, healthy life, and my photo of her lounging in bright-green grass one sunny day even won an SPCA prize! She was also a sweetie: affectionate, gentle, and caring, and she excelled at comforting, curling up on my lap as I cried my way through many difficult times. She definitely loved to eat – once chewing through a plastic bag to get at a just-baked loaf of bread I put on the stairs for the neighbors upstairs, and another time eating raw broccoli. What “normal” cat does that??

Toward the end of her life, she stopped eating her food and then stopped drinking her water, so my daughter, Lacey, who was in early elementary school at the time, and I took her to our vet’s office for him to confirm what seemed obvious – or, hoping against hope, to do something that would miraculously save her. When he said, “we could take an X-ray which would provide more information about what’s going on, but it would probably kill her,” I knew we needed to have her euthanized. We stayed in the room with her and she, ever an “easy” cat, laid still and purred as we told her how much we loved her and stroked her soft fur while the doctor injected the lethal drug that would stop her heart. I cried then and for many days after; I am crying now as I write this. After the ground thawed the following spring, we buried her in the backyard under a flat gray stone with her name on it. When we moved out several years later, we found it very difficult to leave her remains there.

Ginny

Ginny, also an adult female rescue, as was Kit-Kat and every one of our cats thereafter, did not lead a charmed life. We adopted her from a large rescue organization, where she had been dropped off because she “kept having too many kittens.” Hmm; I wonder why that was… She was a sweetheart, nonetheless, and while perhaps not the smartest of all the cats I’ve had, was again, friendly, devoted, and a wonderful companion.

Unfortunately, the summer after my dad died, one hot night when Ginny had decided to stay outside despite our calling and calling, she was attacked by what the vet surmised, given the bite marks, was an opossum. She needed to have her injuries cleaned and her stomach sewed up, and, given that we were getting ready to go on a one-week trip to Maine, we boarded her at the vet’s while we were away. Again, unfortunately, the vet called during the week to tell us that she somehow had been able to pull her stitches out, so she needed new stitches, and the base of her tail was infected and so the tail needed to be “cropped.” I told him to go ahead. This was both stressful and expensive, but it was my own damn fault for leaving her outside at night.

A few years later, we moved to a small, second-floor apartment in Montclair, NJ, where there were cats in the apartment below us as well as a fair amount of car traffic. We thought it best not to let Ginny out, but she was miserable, so I asked mom, who lives on two acres and was at the time without a cat, if she’d be willing to take Ginny in. She reluctantly agreed. I was also reluctant, because mom isn’t known for her gentle, caring nature*, but it felt like we didn’t really have another option.

*Example one: Chuckling, mom once described how her father had tossed a kitten into the cement mixer sitting in their driveway. This blatant display of disregard for animal life may have led her to think it’s funny to catch groundhogs in a Havahart trap, then fill a trashcan with water and “watch them swim” (hilarious!) until they drown. I’m guessing it also allows her to feel superior, as she has described this scenario to me more than once, perhaps expecting me to laugh along with her. My response: “That’s just mean.” Still, although mom’s actions and words frequently appall me, recently I’ve started to wonder if, like Donald J. Trump, she might be naturally rather than intentionally cruel. Of course, the distinction doesn’t matter when you’re on the receiving end of the cruelty.

*Example two: One of mom’s cats, maybe Smoke, the fluffy, gray half-Persian we had adopted sometime from someone, apparently met her in the driveway one night when she had arrived home and was getting out of her car. Somehow, mom didn’t notice that when she got out, she had closed the car door on Smoke’s tail. Also apparently, Smoke chewed off her own tail to escape and mom found her tailless in the morning. I recall not a lick of remorse from mom; Smoke, I’m guessing, felt plenty remorseful.

Regardless, Ginny stayed with mom for several years until she started showing signs of aging and then, as mom told my daughter on the phone one day (and Lacey later told me), “she was walking across the yard and just fell over.” This seemed very unlikely to me, and mom is a lousy liar, but I didn’t want to upset Lacey, so I temporarily accepted this description of how she died. A couple of days afterwards, my brother sent me an email saying, “Sorry to hear that Ginny got the axe.”

Wait, what??

I asked him to explain, and he said that mom saw that Ginny was nearing the end of her life. More recently mom told me that she – Ginny, although it was true of mom as well – had had cancer, which may or may not have been true, so she (mom) asked Dave, her “surrogate grandson,” to shoot her (Ginny, not mom), which he did, saving mom the trouble and expense of taking her to the vet’s to be euthanized. A previous excuse she used for not taking Smoke to the vet’s: “A friend told me that her cat didn’t die peacefully when it was euthanized.” And putting a cat in a bag and shooting it would provide a peaceful end??

I was furious, but also stuck: Did I tell Lacey the truth and cause her to feel even less positive about her wacky grandmother than she was, or let it go as whatever was done was done? I didn’t tell Lacey the true story until much later, maybe after Mom finally told me the truth. Did she think Lacey wouldn’t have shared the story with me, or had she forgotten her own lie? Regardless, Lacey, who loved animals, was livid, saying, “I hate her. She’s evil. And why did she tell me such a bullshit story?” From my perspective, the pain of Ginny’s death was exacerbated by mom’s ridiculous attempt to avoid having to explain or take responsibility for her actions. So typical and so frustrating.

Zoey

Fortunately, in the meantime we had adopted Zoey, another female adult, from the SPCA in our town. She was a beautiful cat, but according to the staff there, only marginally friendlier than her daughter, who was also up for adoption at that time. We decided to take a chance on Zoey which was a great idea...eventually. After we completed all the paperwork, we took her home with us and let her out of the carrying case, whereupon she promptly disappeared into a very narrow, dark crawlspace for days. We kept leaving her food and water, and after several days she cautiously began to explore the rest of the apartment. As a life-long indoor cat, or so we were told, she didn’t seem to want to go outside, and she very slowly began to tolerate, even warm up to us. (It was about then that we got a call from the SPCA saying her former owners wanted her back. I responded with some version of “not going to happen; she’s ours now.”)

Unfortunately, we both hated living in North Jersey and after two years moved back to Western New York state, Zoey crying plaintively the whole way. Once we were settled into our new home on 11 acres, she slowly and *very* carefully began to explore every nook and cranny of our house from the basement to the attic, and even started to take a few tentative steps outside. Similarly, it took her quite some time to acclimate to us. She was the smartest cat I’ve ever had, and, after a couple of years, yes years, she became the most loving cat I had ever had, curling up on my lap and purring loudly whenever I was reading on the loveseat in my small upstairs office.

Once she committed, she was in with all four paws, and I came to love her with every fiber of my being. She, too, kept me on an even keel as my wonderful grandmother, then my beloved aunt died, and I struggled to balance work with taking care of the house and property and raising Lacey. Then, when we moved to Iceland for several months (after Lacey finished college) so I could conduct Fulbright-funded research, we asked a kindly friend and neighbor if he would stop by every other day to check on Zoey, who would remain in the house.

Or so we thought.

Turns out that the very first time he let himself into the house, she darted out, and he never caught sight of her again. He regularly put food and drink out for her in the garage, which she presumably was availing herself of, but she didn’t reappear until the night Lacey arrived home at midnight, after three months away, called Zoey once, and she came running. Whew! Did I mention she was a very smart cat?

Unfortunately, yet again, when I got home three weeks later, while Zoey was *very* snuggly as we made up for time apart, I could feel a small lump on one side of her body, and she sometimes seemed to have a little trouble breathing. Long (sad) story short, the lump was apparently a tumor, so we started Zoey on steroids. They kept the size of the tumor in check, but the vet warned us steroids were not a long-term solution to the problem; they would, however, give her – and us – more time. As the time between shots became briefer, though, we had to decide: Should we let her deal with an illness that was slowly killing her, or have her euthanized while she still had a decent, if not ideal, quality of life?

After much agonizing and a couple of brief discussions with the vet, we eventually decided to bite the bullet and make an appointment for her to be “put down.” Zoey, ever so smart, seemed to know what we were planning and managed to get up into the basement rafters as we were preparing to take her to the vets for the last time. I’ll never forgive myself for poking her with a broom to get her down so we could force her into the carrying case. She cried even more pitifully than usual all the way there, almost causing us to reconsider our decision, which, in hindsight, we should have. The vet apparently thought she was ready to die; clearly, Zoey didn’t agree.

Without going into too much gory detail, we had her euthanized after spending a little time with her in a private room. Choked with tears, we said our good-byes, then stayed with her for what seemed an eternity as she died; that is, was killed by the drugs the vet injected. When I kept on stroking her after she was lying still – she at first had fought being restrained – the vet said to me, rather curtly, “she’s dead.” So she was; thanks for pointing that out.

We were asked if we wanted to stay with her (that is, her body) for a while, and went into what is apparently called a “euthanasia comfort room,” which was, for us, anything but comforting. At some point a vet tech knocked and entered the room to, without getting our permission, roll Zoey’s paws in ink, then create a cheesy card with her pawprints on it. We didn’t want her fricking pawprints; we wanted her. I’ll never forgive them for “pushing us” to have her euthanized or forgive myself for allowing them to do so with what felt like a lack of respect for her and for us. We vowed then to change vets when we got our next cat.

That fall, after we buried Zoey under the tall pines in our side yard, I planted some bulbs near her gravestone. While beautiful small red flowers came up each spring to remind us of her, nothing could bring her back.

Mocha

Eventually, although I didn’t feel quite ready, we went back to Lollypop Farm and adopted Mocha, the friendliest cat there. While most of the other cats huddled in the back corners of their cages, Mocha walked back and forth rubbing against the front door of her cage, making eye contact with prospective new owners, and meowing – which we interpreted as, “choose me; I would love to go home with you!” She was so friendly that other potential adopters were interested in her, too, so we had a quick ‘meet and greet’ during which time she jumped up on my lap, and we said we’d take her. We never, ever regretted that decision.

Mocha was *very* friendly as well as very beautiful (with silky-soft mocha-colored fur, huge jade-green eyes, and whiter-than-white whiskers that dramatically framed her face); she snuggled with the best of them and was the cleverest cat I’ve ever had. For instance, when we talked to her, she varied her vocalizations to suit the situation, raising the end of her meow if she had a question, biting off a sharp response when she wanted us to do something immediately, like feed her – she was rather obsessed with food – and called plaintively when something was troubling her or she arrived with a (usually, but not always) dead rodent that she wanted to share with us.

Our beautiful, smart, and loving cat was diagnosed as having a heart murmur several years ago and, more recently, lymphoma. Mocha took each day as it came and my long-term plan is to live like she did: Eat, sleep, snuggle, repeat, with a short, late-day case of the crazies. She didn’t worry about her health, about getting older, about the Earth’s accelerating collapse, about pleasing others, about what to do next. She just enjoyed life as best she could. Seems like a great plan to me!

Rest in peace, sweet girl. We will love and miss you forever. (June 29, 2024)